Assembla Blog

Posted by andy@assembla.com Mon, 16 Oct 2006 20:23:00 GMT

A questioner over at DZone asks “how do you guys make money at this? ... just want to know if you guys will be around awhile…”

The free version will always be available, and we will continue to invest in it. However, we will soon launch extensions that will provide the tools that corporate projects need to recruit and manage distributed developers, including a developer directory, time tracking, billing, and payment services.

Posted by andy@assembla.com Fri, 29 Sep 2006 16:19:00 GMT

Four years ago, my friend Doug Smith called me up and told me that I was about to have “an experience. A very important experience.� Then he showed me the prototype of a new browsable video format that he called “Nav�. What Larry Atlas and Doug Smith had done was take the key elements of Web browsing – graphical hyperlinks, the back button, forward button, and history, and apply them in a simple, beautiful way to video. Larry, a writer for stage and screen, had designed the Nav format for a new type of movie script that would encourage a viewer to explore multiple threads of character and plot. With the release of the “Onyx Project� DVD, viewers will finally be able to have this experience of true video browsing. The pre-release Web site is up at http://www.theonyxproject.com/

Posted by andy@assembla.com Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:43:00 GMT

A startup will often live or die based on its first product release. Did it get released? Did people find it useful? Good roadmapping dramatically improves your chance of getting to “Yes!� on these critical questions.

Read about my roadmapping technique over at th On Startups blog.

I think it’s my most immediately useful post so far. It’s a technique that has helped me work with individual entrepreneurs, my own products, venture funded companies, and giant corporations. I gave it to Dharmesh at On Startups because he has a much bigger readership that could benefit from this technique.

So, check it out.

Posted by andy@assembla.com Sat, 23 Sep 2006 18:29:00 GMT

Should team task assignments be controlled by a project manager, or should each team member create and accept tasks? You can get a big increase in peformance if you know when to use each of these methods of organization.

Posted by andy@assembla.com Sat, 20 May 2006 22:53:00 GMT

Jon Udell included me in his Friday podcast series this week with a conversation with Andy Singleton about building global teams . Jon has been putting up with me since 1993, when he edited some freelance articles that I wrote for Byte magazine. In 2003 he coined the term “dynamic development” to describe the work I was doing. He has recently been commenting on user innovation and the power of human networks to do work beyond open source sofware. In this conversation, he turns me on to Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, and he cautions against a “walled garden”. Maybe we’ll be able to work together on a universally portable user profile.

Posted by andy@assembla.com Sat, 20 May 2006 21:16:00 GMT

I have been reading a book called The Greek Commonwealth – Politics and Economics in Fifth Century Athens. Originally published in 1911, it’s not out of date. According to the author, “it is natural for human beings to enjoy using their own best faculties. Men never felt that enjoyment so keenly, or put so much high effort into its attainment, as in the workshops of ancient Greece. If you seek a proof, go look through the shelves of our Greek museums. There is hardly an object that they made, however rude, but bears on it, sometimes faintly, sometimes with speaking clearness, the touch of the spirit of Art.� How can we bring that spirit to our work, every day?

Posted by andy@assembla.com Sun, 14 May 2006 21:18:00 GMT

Stephen Walli asks “What makes it different from sourceforge? (Okay, besides the lack of irritating ads.)”

Posted by andy@assembla.com Sun, 30 Apr 2006 10:21:00 GMT

Over the past few months, we have done a lot of work on Assembla.com, our online service for building and running distributed software teams, and Breakout, the underlying platform for professional networks. Now, we are ready to share. If you have suggestions for user groups that can benefit from this resource, or bloggers that might be interested in it, let me know at andy@assembla.com Read on for the story->

Posted by andy@assembla.com Sun, 30 Apr 2006 09:41:00 GMT

To me, it is self-evident that you should test any co-worker, in the job that they will be working at, before you make a permanent offer. I was surprised to see how much criticism Dharmesh Shah picked up for recommending a two month probationary period for new hires, during which the employer or employee could withdraw without negative consequences. Much of the criticism was along the lines of “You should do better interviews”. I suspect those critics have not hired many people themselves. I have been doing it for 20 years, and my hit rate for picking really good workers (who don’t bail out) from even the most extensive interview process is still only about 50%. By persisting in finding ways to run trials, I can move that to 90%. This makes an enormous difference in startup risk and ramp time.

Posted by andy@assembla.com Sat, 15 Apr 2006 13:22:00 GMT

Less than a year ago I wrote an article titled “Is the Enterprise Software Licensing Business Dying�. It was originally posted on IT Managers Journal, but it got picked up by Slashdot and various bloggers and podcasters. It pointed out that enterprise buyers had stopped buying software licenses – the mainstay of the software industry. This caused years of misery for software professionals, years during which software was a bad business to be in. But the light at the end of the tunnel was apparent even then, in the form of new packaging and revenue models. Faster than I imagined, the prospects for the software industry have been transformed. We now have a wonderful alignment of good fundamentals – increasing demand, declining costs, and rapid innovation.